nb Acres, Oxford Canal

After a surprisingly quiet night in Banbury we had a latish start. Well latish for us - 0730. There was a strong smell of brewing in the air, and two boats had gone down through the lock before we got there.

Then as we were rounding a corner, just before Nell Lift Bridge we saw a row of off-side moorings with lots of signs outside advertising temporary moorings, fresh eggs and rare breed meat and pens of pigs. How could we resist?

The moorings are £6 and electricity is £2 per night. The Internet was working so I have finally been able to ubdate this blog, and got all the washing done.

Dean and Sara, who run the moorings and small-holding actually live on their narrowboat, Per Ardua with their three dogs and originally bought the site just to moor their boat. Then came the pigs, sheep, chicken and geese.

They are breeding two rare breeds of pig, Sandy and Black (which is a cross Tamworth/Berkshire) and the very rare Lop.

This is Jennifer (a Sandy and Black) and she is supposed to be farrowing today, but no sign yet.



And this is "The Daddy", Jake.

David was in pig heaven.



There is a farm shop selling their meat and some water buffalo ice cream (we saw the buffalo whilst coming up the Napton Locks), there are also chicks in a pen under a heat lamp and a small incubator with eggs waiting to hatch, some emergency food supplies, milk, drinks, coal and wood.





I don't have any pig cards, but there is also flock Hebridian sheep, so I'm showing this one.


I can't remember when I got these tin sheep, but I stuck this one onto some handmade paper and then matted it onto some white and blue card.

The brown spotty paper was "grunged" with a brown ink pad and fixed onto the front of a white card blank and the sheep was stuck over it.